


Picky Eater

by ckret2



Category: Marvel (Comics), Venom (Comics)
Genre: Alien Biology, Chocolate, Communication, Developing Friendships, Established Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Nonverbal Communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22623328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: The symbiote's been evicted from Eddie while he processes out a toxin that's making his body a temporarily inhospitable habitat.Until it can go home, Dr. Steve's letting it stay in his lab and trying to keep it fed.The key word being "trying."
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Venom Symbiote & Doctor Steven (Marvel)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 178
Collections: SYMBRUARY





	Picky Eater

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [@symbruary](symbruary.tumblr.com) Day 8: "food". I really like Dr. Steve from Costa’s run so I'm glad I managed to come up with a fic idea using him. However I haven't re-read Costa Venom since uhhhh... it came out basically; so if I've forgotten that a scene already happened where symby briefly gets into Dr. Steve's head, whoops.
> 
> The "Eddie is soaked in alien gunk that makes it not safe for symby to be inside his body" isn't a particular reference to any one specific canon Venom plot arc, but a made-up scenario based on Just The Sort Of Nonsense That Tends To Keep Happening To Them.
> 
> This one's a lot longer than most of my other symbruary ficlets have been, and also doesn't feature Eddie, so I decided for AO3 I'm gonna post it solo rather than add it in to the symbrock ficlet compilation.

The symbiote sat in a discontent pile of sludge in front of the petri dish-turned-food bowl holding its chemical cocktail.

"Go on," Dr. Steve encouraged. "It's good for you."

The symbiote stretched out a tendril from its mass to curl over the petri dish, like a snail slowly stretching out to take a drink from a puddle, or perhaps like a particularly picky cat checking to see whether the food that had been offered it was edible. And then it jerked back into its little sludge pile—which was shaped a bit too similarly to the turd emoji for comfort—and shivered in displeasure.

"What's wrong with it?" Dr. Steve asked, exasperated. "I've got my hands of every record and note on your biology the U.S. government has and a few more it doesn't, there can't be anything in there you're allergic to. I'm sure of it. It might not be as tasty as eating post-metabolism byproducts directly out of Eddie's bloodstream, but it's—I _promise_ it's good for you."

The symbiote wiggled back and forth. Dr. Steve got the impression it was trying to give off the sense of shaking its head without first bothering to form a head.

He groaned, momentarily burying his face in his hands. "All right." He took a deep breath. "Listen, you can't—You can't just go without eating. It's going to be another two days before we finish cleaning out the alien gunk Eddie got soaked in so that it's safe for you to go home, and I don't want you to starving in the meantime. I mean—I know it takes a lot more than a few days for you to starve—but Eddie's also told me enough that I know you _get a little weird_ without food."

It knew that Eddie had told him that, it had been in Eddie when he'd told him. Why was he telling the symbiote what Eddie had told him? Carrying on an entire conversation by himself with someone who wasn't talking back—or writing, or typing, or signing, or gesturing emphatically enough for him to understand—was harder than he'd expected. It'd been fine the first few days—having the symbiote hanging out in the lab to babble at while they were waiting for Eddie to detox had been kind of nice—but now that he really _needed_ to understand the symbiote, it was becoming something of an inconvenience. And he had the nervous feeling like he had to talk even more to compensate for the symbiote's lack of communication. There were only so many ways that he could interpret vague wiggles.

"And—for your sake _and_ mine—I'd _really_ like you to not get weird."

The turd emoji deflated slightly, spreading out like a pancake.

"Oh, don't do that. Now I feel bad." Dr. Steve nudged the petri dish a little closer. "But I _really would_ appreciate it if you'd eat."

The side of it closest to the petri dish went concave, as if he was pointing a hair dryer at the symbiote and blowing it away from the petri dish. A trio of white spots manifested on the surface of its mass. After a moment, they resolved into a simple white frowny face.

"What's wrong with it?! Is it the fact that you're away from Eddie? Do you just not have an appetite?"

The symbiote made a sound like a tiny bubble rising to the surface of a tar pit, _spopp_.

Dr. Steve did not speak tiny-popping-bubble-sound language. He sighed heavily, looking at the petri dish with a grimace. After a moment, he said, "Do you wanna just show me?" He held out a finger toward the symbiote. "No coming all the way in, now. I'm not offering out my body as Symbiote Airbnb. But if you can show me without coming all the way in..."

A bit of the symbiote's mass lurched toward Dr. Steve, but stopped just short of touching him, hesitantly. After a moment, it stuck out a tiny little thread, touching him so lightly he couldn't even feel it.

But he could _sense_ it almost immediately, a second consciousness branching curiously through his head—before the sense of that second consciousness almost immediately disappeared. Like seeing lightning flashing in distant clouds at night and then dying out, leaving only black sky. He knew the symbiote must still be in his head, but it wasn't making itself known. Or wasn't allowing him to notice it, one or the other.

The knowledge that it was there but silent was jarring; but he imagined actually _feeling_ it in his head all the time, the way he had when it had first entered, would be even more jarring. Eddie dealt with that all the time?

The knowledge appeared in his thoughts as if he was remembering something he'd already known: **Eddie doesn't just "deal with it." Eddie likes it. No one else does, but Eddie does.**

Well, that explained why they were together, didn't it. So, back to the important subject at hand: what was wrong with the food?

**Phenethylamine.**

The answer didn't come through as a word alone, but as a whole array of sensations: glimpses of memories of a scientific lab that looked like they'd been hideously slacking on maintaining a properly sterile environment; the taste—taste?—"taste"?—of the chemical as it was registered by the symbiote; echoes of the emotions that made the chemical swirl around, not so much an active feeling of love itself but a flat echo of what love felt like; and a highly censored presentation of the fact of eating a brain without any actual brain-eating memory transferred over—which Dr. Steve was grateful to the symbiote for having held back, even if he still now knew far more than he'd ever wanted to know. 

**Sorry.**

No no, he invited it in, he should've known what to expect. 

The thing though, was that the petri dish already had phenethylamine. That was the number one additive he made sure to include. He _knew_ the symbiote needed that. So he didn't see what the problem was. Was it something else in the mix? Did it chemically cancel out the chemical for the symbiote?

**Not how I consume it.**

Hearing something in his head other than himself refer to itself as "I" was _really_ jarring. But okay, fine, how did the symbiote usually consume it.

He was presented with a very clear mental image of a piece of chocolate.

Oh, come on now. Did it make that much of a difference to it? Chocolate might be the tastiest ways _humans_ could consume phenethylamine, but did that hold true to a symbiote? He'd _just_ seen the symbiote's memory of what phenethylamine "tasted" like and it wasn't even a taste at all, it wasn't a taste as humans understood it at all.

He was presented with a very clear and much expanded mental image of a piece of chocolate, nestled in its wrapper inside a big heart-shaped chocolate box—flashes of Eddie's mental associations with the shape of the box, Valentine's and romance and love and caring and care-taking, the things Eddie had purposefully thought about when he'd offered the box because they were the things he wanted his other to associate with the gift as well—the box held in Venom's arm, in the arm of them as two-in-one, both of them together as they should be, the chocolate box held in their arm the concrete proof that their love would give them the strength and the determination to overcome any obstacles that stood in their way—whether those obstacles were the wicked villains that constantly threatened to tear them apart or the mere mundane biological realities of being two very literally star-crossed lovers whose bodies had never evolve to form the symbiotic bond that they had. Chocolate was the mundane little medicine that enabled their marriage; chocolate was the symbol of their commitment to their marriage.

Oh. Yeah, okay, Dr. Steve could see why a petri dish didn't quite cut the bill. Especially when the symbiote was already temporarily evicted from its home for medical reasons.

 **Yes. True.** The symbiote let a flash of worry come through that was so contagiously intense that, for a moment, Dr. Steve was anxious that _he'd_ never get to be inside Eddie's lungs again. Which was a really, really weird thing to suddenly worry about, seeing as he never had been and hoped to never be inside Eddie's or anyone else's lungs. This was turning into a very educational lesson on how alien symbiotic slimes saw the world.

Well, Dr. Steve didn't have any fancy boxed chocolates lying around, but there was a vending machine in the break room. If he added some chocolates into the petri dish, would the symbiote eat the rest of the cocktail?

**Yes.**

What did it want, a Hershey's bar? M&Ms? A Kit Kat?

 **M &Ms, no peanuts.** Dr. Steve was struck with a sudden visceral sense of the absolute delightfulness of the colors of M&Ms and the pleasure of slowly cracking them one by one under a steady layer of goo. **Hershey's if there are no normal M &Ms.**

M&Ms it was, then. He'd be back in a minute with a bag. Maybe two bags, it had made M&Ms sound _really_ fun for a moment there.

Even though the symbiote was keeping its presence silent in Dr. Steve's head, he could somehow feel when it slid itself out and he was by himself again. Wow. _That_ had been an experience. Not one he thought he wanted to repeat—and he definitely didn't find any urges in him stirring up to learn what it'd be like to be covered in a whole layer of slime—but as a one-off thing, he was glad he'd had it.

He prepared to wheel back from the symbiote's table, then hesitated for a moment with his hands on his wheels. "You know—I know you're always in here with Eddie, but he pretty much does all the talking for you, huh? I feel like that's the first time I've really properly met you personally. So—good to meet you, symbiote."

It undulated up and down in a way he took to be a nod.

Then he wheeled for the door to go get them both some M&Ms.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/190726398362/picky-eater). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


End file.
